Matching Supply with Demand

This is the third article in a series on how to leverage your booking engine to drive more revenue. You can see the Introduction here, or read Part 2: Showcasing Your Inventory

Mismatches in Supply and Demand = Lost Revenue

When your peak tee times book up fast, you probably have some number of golfers coming to your site who really want to book, and can’t. This is excess demand, and this is one form of lost revenue. It’s also a bad experience for golfers - they want to play, but can’t, and might end up golfing with your competitor.

Now, think about those cancellations that happen just a day or two before the tee time. Interest in that tee time, even for peak tee time, is at its lowest, and you have very little time to sell it. When that tee time goes unsold, that’s excess supply, and is another form of lost revenue.

This is an important, but challenging problem to fix if you want to grow your revenue. You have limited time to re-sell a canceled tee time. And you can’t know which tee times are going to cancel before they cancel. So how do you align demand with supply and make the most of your revenue?

Bottling Up Demand

What if you could “bottle up” your excess demand and use it in a time when you have excess supply? One way is to pre-sell inventory that you predict will cancel. Airlines do this - it’s called “overbooking”, and while it helps drive more sales, it alienates customers. If your prediction is wrong and everyone shows up, you’ll have to turn away customers or risk having serious pace of play issues for the remainder of the day. 

Tee Time Waitlists Drive Revenue & Loyalty

A simpler way is to use a waitlist. When a customer wants to book a tee time that isn’t available, give the customer the opportunity to tell you they’re interested, and make a promise to them to tell them about open tee times as they come available. Waitlists are not just great for short term revenue gains. Waitlists give you an experience that customers will come back to - if you make it easier to find a tee time, they will book more often. Perhaps more importantly, you start a dialogue with customers which helps build loyalty and increase your share of each golfer’s rounds.

How to Build a Tee Time Waitlist

You can build waitlists without spending a lot of money or building complex software integrations. First, you’ll need a waitlist tool that captures when customers want to play. This can be built with low cost (or even free) tools. Second, you’ll need a way to notify customers when a tee time comes available. This is a little more challenging to implement - you need a way to match up customer interest with open tee times, and you’ll need automated software that sends emails or text messages to interested golfers. Lastly, you’ll need some way to promote your waitlist so that customers know it exists. The best place to put your waitlist is within your booking engine, especially when peak tee times are not available. There are two key reasons for this:

1. You don’t want customers using the waitlist when there are already tee times available

2. You want customers to use the waitlist when they’re feeling the pain of unavailable tee times. If you place your waitlist elsewhere, you’re counting on golfers to be aware enough to navigate to some place on your website 

There are more advanced ways of structuring a waitlist, like setting up a reminder for when Friday tee times open, or allowing automatic booking for customers that pre-pay. There are also some business rules you should consider when using a waitlist. We’ll cover that in another post.

Next up: Relieving Customer Pain